"I saw the Vietnam Veterans Memorial not as an
object placed into the earth but as a cut in the earth that has
then been polished, like a geode. Interest in the land and concern
about how we are polluting the air and water of the planet are
what make me want to travel back in geologic time-to witness the
shaping of the earth before man."

The Virtual Wall offers a unique experience for each visitor. The site
includes close-up photos, slides, and virtual reality experiences of
actually touching and reading the wall. Also includes veteran profiles,
remembrances, reunion postings, name rubbings, custom reports, and
more...

According to MilitaryCity, "Maya Lin, the designer, conceived her design as creating a park within a park — a
quiet protected place that was unto itself yet harmonized with the overall plan of
Constitution Gardens. To achieve that effect, she chose polished black granite for
the walls. Its mirror-like surface reflects the images of the surrounding trees,
lawns and monuments. The walls point to the Washington Monument and
Lincoln Memorial, thus bringing the Memorial into the historical context of our
country. The names are inscribed in the chronological order of the date of
casualty, showing the war as a series of individual sacrifices and giving each
name a special place in history."

Thoughts by Maya Lin on the Vietnam Memorial...

"The Vietnam memorial is a place where something happens within the viewer. It's like
reading a book. I purposely had the names etched ragged right on each panel to look like
a page from a book," Lin said.

"I also wanted remembering the past relevant to the present. Some
people wanted me to put the names in alphabetical order. I wanted them
in chronological order so that a
veteran could find his time within the panel. It's like a thread of
life."

A vibrant and highly-imaginative talk by Maya Lin (Video & Slide Show): discusses her modernism and integration of old and new, from landscape earthworks and country chapels to small, urban apartments, and probing questions like "What happens when you bring a hill inside?"

"Lin’s work has always hovered at the intersection of art, nature and architecture. Maya Lin discusses her works of art and impressive career at artbabble.org

In the interview, Maya Lin comments: "Every one of us wants to at some point escape back into nature. On Long Island, you’re surrounded by water on both sides; you’ve got the bay coming up separating the North and the South Fork. I am extremely interested in the water’s edge, and thinking about sea level and understanding how transmutable and temporal that boundary between land and sea actually is. I’m very committed to doing something to help us understand and move quicker. I think this is going to be a huge part of our conversation in our lifetime. This is not something for the next two generations. It’s happening now."

Maya Lin Video at the Johnson Museum
On April 10, 2014, Maya Lin discussed her work, including her recent sculptures and the installation, "Empty Room," from her "What is Missing?" memorial, on view as part of Beyond Earth Art: contemporary artists and the environment at the Milstein Hall Auditorium.

"Born in 1959 in Athens, Ohio, Maya Lin catapulted into the public eye
when, as a senior at Yale University, she submitted the winning design
in a national competition for a Vietnam Veterans Memorial to be built
in Washington, D.C. She was trained as an artist and architect, and her
sculptures, parks, monuments, and architectural projects are linked by
her ideal of making a place for individuals within the landscape. Lin,
a Chinese-American, came from a cultivated and artistic home. Her
father was the dean of fine arts at Ohio University; her mother is a
professor of literature at Ohio University. "As the child of immigrants
you have that sense of, Where are you? Where's home? And trying to make
a home," remarks Lin. She draws inspiration for her sculpture and
architecture from culturally diverse sources, including Japanese
gardens, Hopewell Indian earthen mounds, and works by American
earthworks artists of the 1960s and 1970s."

"The Peace Chapel is an environmental landscape site designed by
architect Maya Lin. It occupies a 14-acre site within the 170-acre
Baker-Henry Nature Preserve. Located near the Juniata College campus,
the Peace Chapel provides a contemplative setting within the rolling
hills of central Pennsylvania."

"Designed and constructed in 1988-1989, the Peace Chapel consists of
two sites. The larger site is defined by a 40-foot circle of rough
granite stones that line a shallow well at the top of a hill. A series
of smoothly polished granite steps lead from the footpath up to the
circle of stones. The smaller site occupies the top of a slightly
higher neighboring hill. This smaller site consists of a 4-food
diameter smooth granite disk set within the forest that blankets the
hill. From the disk one can peer through the trees to the distant hill
and view the larger circle of stones."

Downloadable oversize images of works by Maya Lin at the Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum, Smithsonian. Above: The wood used for Lin's bench came from FSC-certified land managed by The Nature Conservancy. Photo: Dan Whipps

The heart of the project, says Lin, is the drawing table. Many of her
designs, notably the Vietnam memorial, feature a large, flat stone
surface inscribed with text that visitors can trace with their fingers.
For the Arts Plaza, she replaced text with "a simple line drawing that
takes its shape as a bubbling line of water on the surface."

"You may think you actually see the water drawing a line," Lin
said. 'Text has been reduced to the mark of the human hand, so you
realize, 'This is a school of the arts.'"

An array of fascinating photos from a 2006 Exhibition at Arcspace,
and much to read and learn from. Includes (above): A 2x4 Landscape
"composed of more than fifty thousand vertical two-by-four boards
placed in a configuration minutely detailed in models and drawings" and
a view along a boardwalk over restored wetlands, part of six monumental projects by Lin along the Columbia River in Oregon and Washington — read more at the Confluence Project website.

"When you enter the restored forest ecosystem at Sandy River Delta, you'll encounter an elliptical bird blind, which embodies Confluence Project's commitment to sustainability and ecologically aware artistry. Stroll up a gently curving 150-foot ramp to the bird blind, constructed of sustainably harvested, durable black locust wood. From this quiet spot, you can view birds and wildlife that inhabit the area today as you learn about the flora and fauna-some of which are now extinct, endangered or threatened species-that existed here 200 years ago. The artwork serves as a lasting reminder of the impact humans have had on the environment and a model for a new way to envision the connection between people and the natural world."

"In 2004, Maya Lin did a major outdoor project, 11 Minute Line, a 1500-foot long earth drawing. The first installation made outside the Park, this project truly utilized the assets and opportunities, time and space, available at Wanås. Comprising a serpentine line slipped into the ground in a field where the cows graze, 11 Minute Line is a very a playful piece – a simple drawing on which the visitors can walk."

"The simple granite blocks of Lin’s Women’s Table organically emerge from the pavement as both a lament and a tribute. A string of figures marks the number of female students at Yale each year since its founding in 1701. These numbers grow with time as they spiral out toward the table’s edge, swelling like the rings of water that bubble from the central spring and spill over on all sides." (More images at Google.)

"The goal is to encourage us to contemplate the natural world and, more pointedly, to goad us into giving a damn. A winding vein of silver that represents the embattled Colorado River isn’t just a beautiful art object, it’s a rallying cry: Defend the earth, or one day way too soon, all that will be left of these landscapes will be the art they inspired--accidental memorials to another mindless slaughter."

Maya Lin is not credited as the designer of the 9/11
memorial called Reflecting Absence, submitted by Michael Arad, but
according to the "New York Times," an early sketch she drew for "The
New York Times Magazine" had two pools and a grove of trees just as the
winning design did. There has been no particular controversy regarding
the resemblence of the accepted design and Lin's sketch (see above
left), since Maya Lin was herself a juror on the 13-member design committee ("The 9/11 Memorial"). However the Times article
by David W. Dunlap and Glenn Collins, published January 8, 2004,
states, "Public attention has focused on the possibly persuasive role
played by one juror, Maya Lin, who designed the Vietnam Veterans
Memorial in Washington. She sketched out a proposal for the memorial in
"The New York Times Magazine" of Sept. 8, 2002, that bears a
superficial resemblance to Reflecting Absence."

The finished design (above right) was revised by Peter Walker, a
California landscape architect; and Daniel Libeskind, the site's lead
architect, and "will add lusher landscaping" and create "an underground
center to house artifacts," according to a Times update on January 14, 2004.

A photo of a completed 911 Reflecting Absence pool at the Memorial in NYC, taken by earlywomenmasters.net on March 8, 2012 (click to zoom):

"Maya Lin: A Strong Clear Vision is a
portrait of the Chinese American
artist/architect/sculptor who
designed the Vietnam Veterans
Memorial while an undergraduate
student at Yale University. The
film tells the gripping story behind
the Vietnam Veterans Memorial
and explores a decade of her
creative work." Now on DVD, available from Amazon.com.

"The film is absolutely riveting in its look back at the emotion-packed hearings
about the memorial, the political controversies swirling around it, the grief-
choked testimony of veterans, and the beautifully sad interaction of the endless
thousands who find catharsis visiting the wall, reading the names, pondering
death and seeing their reflections in its black surface.

"The film makes it clear that Lin is a woman of almost ferocious conviction. In
intimate moments she is shown working in her spartan New York City studio,
cutting pieces for an architectural model, and breaking glass for a rooftop
installation at an Ohio art museum."

"On a personal level, I wanted to focus on the nature of accepting and
coming to terms with a loved one's death. Simple as it may seem, I
remember feeling that accepting a person's death is the first step in
being able to overcome that loss.

"I felt that as a culture we were extremely youth-oriented and not
willing or able to accept death or dying as a part of life. The rites
of mourning, which in more primitive and older cultures were very much
a part of life, have been suppressed in our modern times. In the design
of the memorial, a fundamental goal was to be honest about death, since
we must accept that loss in order to begin to overcome it. The pain of
the loss will always be there, it will always hurt, but we must
acknowledge the death in order to move on." (November 2, 2000)

When Center officials decided in 1988 to build a memorial
to honor victims of the Civil Rights Movement, board
member Eddie Ashworth thought immediately of Maya Lin.
Seven years earlier, when she was a 21-year-old senior at
Yale, Lin was chosen in a national competition to design the
Vietnam Veterans Memorial. That memorial had proven to
be a place of healing, a place where, as one veteran
described, "the living and dead could meet."

"'I work with the landscape, and I hope that the object and the land are equal partners.'

"One of the rare few who has managed to forge a path in both art and
architecture, Maya Lin is a sculptor, architect, designer, and
craftswoman. Lin has consciously resisted divisions between
architecture and design or fine and applied art."

Maya Lin discusses Her Last and Ongoing Memorial to a Dying Planet!
Listen to the Interview and visit her website at What Is Missing?

A: "The Presidio is a former military base that is
being turned into a National Park. So I said to the other members on
the Council, "Let's think conceptually about that word 'defense.'
Instead of defense in the sense of war, let's talk about defense of the
planet — protecting it, and being its true steward." So my position
was: Why not make the Presidio a case study — from the building end,
from the transportation end, from the point of view of energy
efficiency — and learn how to make it less harmful to the environment."

"'The Wave Field' is located next to and completes the
François-Xavier Bagnoud Building, which opened in 1993, and was
underwritten by the family foundation named for François-Xavier
Bagnoud, a former student in aerospace engineering at the university in
Ann Arbor.

"A pure earth sculpture, made entirely of soil covered with grass, 'The
Wave Field' collapses the boundaries between nature and art, earth and
water, object and pedestal.
The sculpture, which took over two years to complete, is approximately
90 feet by 90 feet square. The waves, which rise from the natural
ground plane to five or six feet high, make a subtle transition into
the piece, blurring the distinction between the sculpture and the space
in which it exists."

Maya Lin describes "The Wave Field"
as "...pure poetry. It is a very gentle space that exists on a very
human scale. It is a sanctuary, yet it's playful, and with the changing
shadows of the sun, it is
completely transformed throughout the day. 'The Wave Field' expresses
my desire to completely integrate a work with its site, revealing the
connectedness of art to landscape, or landscape as art."

"Thanks to Barnes and Noble Chair Len Riggio and his wife
Louise, an exquisite library designed by Maya Lin was dedicated
on March 19, 1999, to our great Black bard.

"It includes the John Hope Franklin-Maya Angelou reading
room, a Mrs. Rosa Parks sitting area, and a meeting room which
can accommodate 75. Young people and all who come to Haley
Farm for training and fellowship are able to conduct research;
read about and meditate on great heroes, heroines, writers,
and thinkers; and be exposed to the best quality children's
literature by authors and illustrators of African descent
and on Black experiences."

Maya Lin Visionary 2012
"Ms. Lin is the fourth person to be honored by the New Museum in its Visionaries series, which was inaugurated in 2009 to honor “international thinkers in the fields of art, architecture, design and related disciplines of contemporary culture.”

Systematic Landscapes by Maya Lin:
"Utilizing the way in which scientists and computers see our world,
drawing on images based on sonar views of the ocean floor, to aerial
and satellite views of the land, I have started to create artworks that
translate that technological view into sculptural forms." (Maya Lin)

Maya Lin Boundaries:
From Amazon.com review; "Understandably, Lin writes in greatest detail
about the Vietnam memorial, a high-profile commission fraught with
controversy because of its unusual form as well as the age, gender, and
ethnicity of its American-born architect. But this engrossing, amply
illustrated book also details the thinking and experimentation behind
myriad other projects, including elemental sculptures, interiors, and
furniture designed with an unusual degree of consideration for the
user's needs."
224 pages (October 2000) Simon & Schuster; ISBN: 0684834170